


An Empty Room with All the Windows Smashed

by Missy



Category: Walking on Broken Glass - Annie Lennox (Music Video)
Genre: Backstory, Banter, Character Study, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Getting Back Together, Growing Old Together, Humor, Marriage, Marriage to Save Honor, Nuns Going Wild, Peripheral Discussions of Parenthood, Regency, Regency Era, Romance, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 17:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18529555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Anne's ex-husband's wedding is something of an emotional tempest for her.  No matter how hard she's tried, she can't quite believe the love of her life has left her for a woman half her age.  As she remembers their past, she can't stop herself from throwing herself at him one more time.  But will her passion cause a fresh revolution or will she be forced to accept the fact of his new marriage?





	An Empty Room with All the Windows Smashed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



Anne, third Marchioness of Clevendon, sits alone with agony stabbing her sharply in the breast. She has just watched her ex-husband's marriage to a young chit - and somehow managed to control herself. The reception, however, is trying her nerves, and she glares over the top of her wine glass at John as he wraps his arm around the twittering, grinning girl hanging off of his arm, sending up clouds of powder with every faked laugh. His brand-new bride, and Anne's everlasting annoyance.

Anne’s inner monologue would be worthy of the latest pennyweight parlor drama. _Really, John? She’s half your age. What on earth are you going to do with her? Can it compare to anything we shared?_

She’s aware of the staring of the other guests, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to give them her attention. 

“Wine, milady!” There’s a voice she must give some form of polite attention to. The voice of Adam cuts through her concentration and she resists the urge to slap him. For once. She instead whacks her fan against her thigh.

“Yes. Thank you.” She takes the cup and drinks of it, deeply, if only to ignore Adam’s forward behavior. 

It’s the finest vintage from their well-curated wine cellar. John is serving their wine, her wine, at his wedding to another woman. 

_The cheap bastard._

She never stops staring at the back of John’s head as he moves through the ballroom, staring over his shoulder at her as if she’d turned into a particularly troublesome ghost. If looks could kill they all would have been dead, and Anne was not sure if she'd appreciate the obliteration or enjoy the victory.

 

 

****

**~~+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++~~**

 

 

They had been matched, quite thoroughly, by her ambitious mother and his greedy father. Anne hadn’t known that at the time – she had been enthralled with John all by herself from the callow age of eighteen in the midst of her first Season. John, too, had been young and foolish – a budding lawyer, hoping to become a politician. Anne had embraced that notion as she had embraced him. They were married at twenty-one. Her mother got the titled heir as a favored son and the respect of rising up a social peg, and his father got a daughter of good breeding and vast wealth to replenish those coffers.

They were happy for a time. The lovemaking had been outstanding, and they had matched in interests – drama, excellent music, the opera, good wine, fast horses and arch conversation. Four children had come from that passion, and though neither of them were particularly awful parents, they were both too tempestuous to provide law and order for the unruly lot. The children provided that themselves – and the staff, which Anne had rotated out like a pack of coach horses bi-yearly. Somehow they’d produced a scholar who locked himself away in a university in Oxford studying dinosaur bones, a merchant who spent most of the year in America, a fanciful chatterbox who was on the eve of her own first marriage, and Petite-Anne who, somehow, was a novitiate at the Saint Francis parish. 

A nun. Anne’s mother must be laughing somewhere in hell.

And Anne and John had marched on through the years. Her lips had sprouted fine lines, and his eyes had grown bagged; he had gained a bit of weight and gotten gouty-footed in his dancing; their sex had grown into a languorous gambol in comparison to the giddy gallop it had once been. He had gained respect as a politician and attained a position in the House of Lords. She became known as a daring and flamboyant hostess who was a patroness of the arts. They had been well-suited. There was no need to change what was working.

Then hell had come to their paradise, and she had never circumvented the bitterness that had rained upon their private parade.

 

 

****

**~~+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++~~**

 

 

Anne paces the balcony, remembering what had torn them apart. Her mother had warned her that all men cheat, and perhaps she could have tolerated a mistress drawn from among her equals.

But to have her husband tell her that he’d fallen in love with one of their daughter’s fellow postulates – well, that was a heavy load to bear. 

Anne had shouted and plead, and John – in his honorable way – had insisted upon the divorce. The girl was debauched - the sisters would not take her back. They would do the honorable thing and be wed, to save her the disgrace of being a blasted unvirginal nun.

And so they were Divorced. Anne became the scarlet single woman living in a secondary house with a lover who does not interest her, and he somehow expiated of all of his social sins because of the sweetness of his babyish bride.

He invites them all to the wedding. She accepts, because Adam says it will be good form. The children pretend to have other things to do – and poor Petite-Anne is absolutely distraught in her little convent on the hill.

Grande Anne would send her daughter a fine drought of bourbon, but she doesn’t know if drunkenness counts as a sin.

 

 

****

**~~+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++~~**

 

 

With a belly filled with wine, Anne drags John out into the dais, badgering him the whole way but unable to resist his gravitational pull. They face one another, his hands upon her shoulders, playing the reasonable mock-saint, as always. 

But she spits her words out first – and bitterly. “Do you have to humiliate me with her?”

“Dear…”

“I know that you must be a perfect bride and groom, but you can’t simply _erase_ me, John.”

“Fair heart!”

“You invite me to this wedding and act as…”

He pins her to the wall. “A bridegroom?”

She moans. “God, save me from this misery. Take me home and promise me it’s all a nightmare…”

“Darling, stop.”

“A nightmare!”

He flushes about the brow, sweat penetrating the fine layer of powder covering his features. “I must go back to Hannah!”

She’s in tears, alone, and so furious.

Good God. She wants to laugh at herself, would laugh at herself, were she not in such great need of the closeness he had so cruelly deprived her of.

And Anne always gets what she wants. 

 

 

****

**~~+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++~~**

 

 

She is not precisely cruel. Strong of opinion, fearless of posture, and determined to have her way but no – not cruel. The scene she makes, the begging, the pleading upon her knees – well, call that a revenge. She sees Adam over her shoulder, insisting that she’s drunk but oh, she’s never had a clearer head.

That he remains unmoved after begging him to take her back in front of that simpering wife of his is far too much for her to take. She won’t scrape and bow a man who has no love for her after thirty years of blind devotion.

So she leaves at double speed, eyes boring holes into the back of her head, not even Adam daring to follow her out. 

By the time she makes it down the staircase, he’s waiting for her at the foot.

She doesn’t ask questions when he sweeps her up into his arms. Well, not until they’re at the threshold of the portico.

“And what are you doing, husband?” He doesn't drop her, to her relief, and she wonders how much more his knees will endure. 

He laughed. “Incredible thing. It seems that your little scene dislodged a truth from Hannah. “

“Oh?” A bob of her chin.

“The nuns want her after all. It seems they're sending a boat of girls off to establish a convent somewhere in Spain, and when she saw us visiting our daughter - well, you can see why she came up with such a lie.” He puffs out his chest and Anne doesn't even roll her eyes, she's that happy.

A twist of her neck to take in his features. She keeps her words cool. “Oh.”

“Seems she wished to have me any way she might. But not even I am charitable enough to bear such lies. There will be an annulment. And another wedding; ours. Hopefully after our daughter has taken her vows.”

She cackles aloud as he sweeps her off of her feet and carries her with determination toward her waiting carriage. 

Well. She _is_ awfully good at getting what she wants.

**Author's Note:**

> I know you didn't want kids, but since they're fully grown in this story and peripheral to the central action, I hope you won't mind too much that they exist!


End file.
